If you’re looking for more depth in a game, one in which you get experience for actually role-playing, you really should look elsewhere. There are rules in the book that seem to be rules for rewarding the role-playing style, but they ultimately boil down to giving experience for using a skill during those encounters. A role-playing encounter, a true role-playing encounter, doesn’t involve game mechanics at all. In fact, you often lose something during the role-playing that, mechanic-wise, you should not have done so.
Sooo....
One on hand you are attacking the DMG of not mechanically rewarding roleplaying, while on the other you are arguing that roleplaying should exist independent of game mechanics...
One on hand you are attacking the DMG of not mechanically rewarding roleplaying, while on the other you are arguing that roleplaying should exist independent of game mechanics...
Please explain?
Actually, it seems to me that he's saying that the "role-playing" EP award is actually a skill check EP award (in other words, the same award you would have gotten for any other skill check). Role-Playing does not always rely on a skill check and thus the award should have nothing to do with any skill checks made. I don't know if this is the case or not in the DMG as I don't have the game, but that's the way I read is review.
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Deric Page
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A role-playing encounter, a true role-playing encounter, doesn’t involve game mechanics at all.
Humm, that's what you think. Needless to say it is not consensual. Actually, it is far from being consensual. Actually, I would consider that you are in the minority of roleplayers that sustain this view. Actually a very small minority.
Whatever, first, if that's your view, you should state it upfront, that way the reader knows right away the perspective that colors the review. Second, you should not be so dogmatic. It would be better for you to say something like, "from my perspective/point of view/understanding A role-playing encounter, a true role-playing encounter, doesn’t involve game mechanics at all."
Of course, from that perspective there's hardly anything in the DD core books that is about role-playing encounters. Or in the GURPS core books. Or in the BRP core books. Or in the WoD core books. Or in the core books for almost any rpg published.
Needless to say, you live in an eden of true roleplayers, an eden that excludes, what, 99.999999999999% of the hobby?
Which begs the question: If, according to your definition, the DD PHB and most of the DMG are not about role-playing encounters; and then they are not about role-playing (since there is no role-playing without role-playing encounters); why are you submiting your reviews as reviews of rpg products? Wouldn't it make more sense for you to tag them as reviews of non-rpg products and get them published as such?
Disease is a form of combat when you are fighting mummies or otyughs. Yeah, sure, the combat chapter was a weird place to put disease rules, but we are at least talking about diseases you pick up because through terrible combat against horrible monsters rather than diseases you pick up because the dwarf won't wash his hands.
As for roleplaying experience, I'm sure a lot of DMs will award it anyway, regardless of what it says in the book. For that matter, some of them just have people level up when they feel like it, regardless of what it says in the book. However, there are still two codified ways to (somewhat indirectly) earn roleplaying experience: skill challenges and minor quests.
Skill challenges are, mechanically, a reward for overcoming a non-combat challenge and mostly involve making a lot of skill checks. But if the DM is inclined to let you get away with rolling your better skills if you can explain how it works, or if the DM is inclined to give you assorted +2 bonuses for good descriptions (neither of which are house rules), then good roleplaying can make it easier to complete skill challenges, which will result in more and easier experience from those skill challenges. (Kind of like if good roleplaying gave you a +2 to hit in combat; it would have a side effect of letting you earn experience faster and easier through combat, even if it didn't directly give you experience.)
Minor quests are set by the DM, but they seem to be intended to be small RP related choices and personal goals, and it's entirely reasonable for a well roleplayed character to generate a ton of minor quests, simply by giving the DM the inspiration for them. Which is to say, character hooks have a roundabout way of turning into experience points.
A role-playing encounter, a true role-playing encounter, doesn’t involve game mechanics at all.
Oh, come on.
__________________ If knowledge of a game's plot would spoil its experience, it isn't a game.
... A player cannot learn of a game's ending without experiencing it, because a game is not a linear object.
—Mike Mearls
Actually i know more than enough people who truly believe & embrace that.
It isn't like the "And we played for X many hours / sessions without a single dice-roll" isn't a phrase unheard of frequently enough around these parts, too.
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"I'm from Greece so i can say 'Tzimisce' with ease."
Actually i know more than enough people who truly believe & embrace that.
It isn't like the "And we played for X many hours / sessions without a single dice-roll" isn't a phrase unheard of frequently enough around these parts, too.
Absolutely, but still...
__________________ If knowledge of a game's plot would spoil its experience, it isn't a game.
... A player cannot learn of a game's ending without experiencing it, because a game is not a linear object.
—Mike Mearls
Actually i know more than enough people who truly believe & embrace that.
It isn't like the "And we played for X many hours / sessions without a single dice-roll" isn't a phrase unheard of frequently enough around these parts, too.
Yup, I'd agree to that. Perhaps I am part of the "minority of roleplayers that sustain this view" but while I wonder what a "true" roleplaying encounter actually is, I do think rolling dice isn't really necessary for it. What would be the alternative? Would it only count as roleplaying-encounter when you're allowed to roll your "Diplomacy" or " Fast-Talk" or "Scream till you get what you want" skill?
However, I would perhaps modify the statement to say: "A role-playing encounter, a true role-playing encounter, doesn’t necessarily involve game mechanics at all"...
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To err is human, to ARR is pirate!
However, I would perhaps modify the statement to say: "A role-playing encounter, a true role-playing encounter, doesn’t necessarily involve game mechanics at all"...
A while back, after I'd read about Amber but before I purchased the book, I decided to give it a shot and see how stuff like that would work. My brother created a character appropriate for the only rpg we really knew (AD&D--he was a ranger) and we ran a short D&D game using what I'd guessed were the Amber rules.
Long story short, we had a pretty good combat encounter that didn't involve game mechanics.
Because of that, I'm inclined to agree that no particular part of a roleplaying game requires that game mechanics be involved there. But I figure they should be involved somewhere, or else we're falling down on the "game" part of "roleplaying game". Besides, if your character sheet says you have a big bonus to some social skill, it's a shame if you never get to use it. (The bonus; not the skill itself.)
Linear Mode
